Monthly Archives: September 2012

Just as in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s series finale, I sometimes feel as though our own society is racing towards collapse. I see man’s inhumanity towards man, politicians spouting the same old rhetoric, petty acts of vandalism and destruction, and so much ill-will towards other groups, whether those groups be different religiously, ethnically, racially, or whatnot.

But as a lover of all things historical, I take the moment to look at our world and compare it to what it was like even a century ago, and despite all our problems plaguing us today, from the economy, to racial and national tensions, to ecological stresses, we arebetter off than we were. We do live better and longer lives, with more opportunities than ever before to achieve our dreams both large and small.

It’s difficult sometimes to be positive, but it’s important in times of difficulty to be mindful of all we do have and all we might yet achieve, both individually and as a society. We can change the world for the better. We already have. We just have to remind ourselves of that every now and then.

It sounds like science fiction, but in fact NASA is working on a real-life warp drive. Theoretically, with this technology we could achieve interstellar travel with effective speeds of 10c! We would be able to travel to nearby stars and the planets that surround them all within a human lifetime. The possibilities are just endless. It fills me with such terrible hope for the future of humanity that we will be able to escape the womb of mother Earth and finally reach the stars! What wondrous opportunities for humanity will this herald?

Simultaneously I am filled with equal amounts of trepidation, for what terrible dangers will we discover? Aggressive species? Unforeseen space phenomena? Technical difficulties that lead to us being lost in space? Unknown killer viruses from alien worlds?

Perhaps we will discover less-advanced species nearby and instead of following our own history and taking advantage of them, we will, like the Vulcans in Star Trek, merely send something like a Vulcan Survey Ship to observe and perhaps help them on their way to the stars.

In the Enterprise series episode, “Fusion“, we are introduced to a small band of Vulcans travelling aboard the Vulcan Vahklas-class transport. Without spoiling too much of the episode for you, what makes these Vulcans intriguing is that they are Vulcans that have found a balance between logic and emotion. This balance is something that we humans strive to achieve on a daily basis. Too far in the realm of logic and pure analytical reasoning, and we risk being unemotional and detached, isolating ourselves from our friends and co-workers. Too far into the realm of emotion and we risk letting our stronger emotions (whether hate or fear or happiness) run wild, possibly leading to similarly undesirable consequences.

So here’s to more balance in our lives, between the fire of our heart’s passion, and the cool logic of our minds.

The Vulcans in Star Trek have always been known for their peaceable natures and their commitment to logic and a philosophy of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC), which advocated for tolerance and even acceptance of differing belief systems and practices. It came as somewhat of a shock to many Star Trek fans when the Enterprise series portrayed Vulcans as being far more militant than they’ve ever been shown before. The Vulcan government in the series was shown fielding starships designated as Vulcan D’Kyr-class combat cruisers, engaged in covert spying of nearby species (Andorians) as well as acting as Big Brother to humanity. Most shocking of all was the Vulcan governing body known as the High Command was willing to fire upon and kill those that disagreed with its policies, actions hardly congruent with the traditional Vulcan philosophy of IDIC. The Vulcans were justifying these actions using logic, but logic without reference to the morality of their founder, Surak.

We later discover that the Vulcans had strayed from their society’s founder’s core tenets and beliefs and eventually the Vulcans of the Enterprise series (22nd century) would morph into the peacenik Vulcans we know and love of later Star Trek series (23rd and 24th centuries).

It’s an object lesson to us that all societies change, but that we must be careful to look to the intentions, to the morality behind our laws when we go about changing them or creating new laws. Sometimes we get lost in the wording of our laws and lose sight of the intent behind them, and inevitably we marginalize viewpoints and perspectives that are abhorrent to the majority but sacrosanct to the minority. Even scarier is when we adopt the language of a law whose intent was to marginalize the minority (whether racial, religious, ethnic, or other) and apply it to our entire society, without realizing that discriminating intent. We must be ever mindful of the intent behind our laws, for we are all affected by them whether we realize it or not.

In the universe of Star Trek: Online the peaceful Federation has come into increasing conflict with the Klingon Empire, with the result that the Federation has begun producing more warships, rather than its formerly (almost) exclusive policy of building multi-function starships suitable for both peaceful and military purposes.

It’s interesting that the Federation would have ever thought that it could realistically sustain its territory without building ships dedicated to war. The reason being the Federation is an obvious analogy for either the United States (or more rarely the United Nations). Can you imagine the United States naval fleet being composed of ships that were like the Federation’s multi-purpose ships? We’d have ships that would be housing entire families, with large areas devoted to arboretums and recreation areas. As laudable as the Federation’s intent is, it is not something that would be feasible here on Earth, just as in the end it proved to be unfeasible in the fictional universe of Star Trek. Perhaps one day we can have sea ships similar to the Federation’s starships, vessels that while capable of defending themselves are more suited to peaceful purposes.